My one-on-one hatha yoga sesson

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but I've joined a new, fancy luxurious health club in downtown SF that has an entire separate floor for a "mind-body" department that teaches yoga and stuff. The decor is all very asian and zen, it's like one big zen burger. They have about six little private rooms with cushions and stuff where one can go in alone and do yoga and meditate.

Anyway, as a new member I get two free sessions with a trainer and I picked a yoga trainer for mine. Before we started I admitted my lifelong fascination with yoga as well as my continued complete lack of flexibility that made me feel very awkward in group classes. (The whole thing makes me feel awkward actually but that is another story)

Anyway, at one point she admitted that, yes, I was very stiff but that I had an unsual awareness of my breath. How she got that I have no idea. I told her that my meditation practice was often concentrated on paying attention to my breath and she said something like, "oh, that makes sense," and seemed impressed.

Whatever she noticed about me and my breath is interesting to me. As a yoga teacher she must know something about such things. I must also admit that I feel a bit embarassed by how puffed up I got from this exchange ("see how freaking spiritual I am").

"Whatever she noticed about me and my breath is interesting to me. As a yoga teacher she must know something about such things."

To risk sounding as cynical as Mike Monson periodically does, maybe she's just using an age-old sales ploy on you: compliment the man customer and he'll come begging for more yoga lessons.



-cmarti

That's gotta be it!

How could she possibly tell I had some unsually good awareness of my breath? And, as I was leaving she did pitch some new member discounted set of 10 one on one lessons for some outrageous price that I inwardly scoffed at.

(maybe, just maybe, since she is always telling students to inhale for certain parts of certain poses and exhale for certain parts of others, she notices them, time and again, being confused about where their breath was at that moment? While I, with my uncanny respiratory awareness was clearly never confused?)

http://graph.facebook.com/658704623/picture?type=large

She seems very nice and sincere. Yet, a yogi has to make a living, right?

I don't trust that dog.

Someone's gotten distracted! LOL